Sarah Michelle Gellar Through the Years

by Susan Toepfer

1983

Makes her TV debut opposite Valerie Harper (holding Gellar) in the CBS movie An Invasion of Privacy, filmed when she was four. She had just been signed by an agent who spotted her in a Manhattan restaurant

1993-95

Appears as the long-lost daughter of Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) on ABC’s All My Children. “It was the best training ground,” says Gellar, who won the 1995 Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama.

1997-2003

Gains fame in the WB/UPN series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (with David Boreanaz, above) as a teen charged with protecting her town from the undead. “I am proud and honored to have been part of it,” Gellar says.

2011-12

Stars as both a woman on the lam and her sophisticated twin sister in theCW drama Ringer. During one episode, she recalls struggling to hide her pregnancy “in a wedding gown—wedding gowns aren’t very forgiving!”